John Lennon’s Imagine was very popular when I lived in Japan over twenty years ago. I’d hum along when I heard it playing in department stores –after all, it was in English. I could understand it. One day, I listened more closely to the words and realized I had been merrily singing along with the …
Back in August, I promised that I would tell you a little more in October about a holiday I learned about last year from a student project in our library: White Sunday. It’s celebrated today in Samoa, and by the Samoans in my community. Pictures of White Sunday look like Confirmation Sunday or like a group …
This will be a short post today, but my heart is full and I feel so blessed by two big events in our lives at the moment. The first event is the big transition to college for our oldest child. Seattle Pacific University did a great job making us feel happy this past week to …
“No one will know,” I thought. Living alone and far from home in Tokyo about 25 years ago, I was trying to decide whether or not to sleep in or get up and go to church. Who would care? How could it matter? It’s easy to think that you can get away with certain things …
Anyone who lived in Seattle during the magical 1995 baseball season will remember “the Sheriff,” Norm Charlton. Arriving midseason, he had been one of the Cincinnati Reds “Nasty Boys” who delivered a sense of invincibility along with his fastball. He would stride out to the mound with his thumbs in his waistband, and no matter …
The first time I became aware of Ramadan–it was, in fact, my first-ever significant exposure to Islam–several 2nd grade boys in my international school classroom in Tokyo come running to me, their teacher, to inform me that one of their classmates wouldn’t eat. He was a boy from Qatar, and he usually wouldn’t eat pork …
Oh yes, there was diversity in my small hometown in Ohio. We had the kids who went to church every Sunday no matter what, the kids who only went to special youth group events, or (gasp!) the people who only went to church on Christmas and Easter. My twelve-year-old self couldn’t have imagined that one …
There were Good Christians and Not-so-good Christians Read More »
Sophie and Timley, the two main characters in my upcoming novel for kids, (Bon Voyage, Sophie Topfeather), run away from home and find themselves “up in a crow’s nest”–alone, scared, away from family and friends’ expectations, and on the adventure of a lifetime. In that isolated place, high above a vast ocean, they are no …
